Higher Learning with Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay - Conversations on the Israel-Hamas Conflict

Episode Date: October 13, 2023

Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay are joined by staff writer for The Atlantic Yair Rosenberg to discuss reporting on the Israel-Hamas war (8:52) before professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland Shibley Telhami joins to lend his expertise on the conflict (42:08). Then writer-producer Daniella Greenbaum Davis joins to discuss her response to the pro-Hamas tweet from BLM Chicago (1:02:18) and the relationship between the American Jewish and Black communities (1:15:44). Last and pretty least, a quick take on Jada Pinkett Smith’s separation from Will Smith (1:42:38). Hosts: Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay Guests: Yair Rosenberg, Shibley Telhami, and Daniella Greenbaum Davis Producers: Donnie Beacham Jr. and Ashleigh Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yo, yo, yo, Thought Warriors. What is up? Higher Learning is on. Is Ivan Lathin Jr.? And it's me, Rachel and Lindsay. Okay, so here's the thing, guys. We have a gigantic, huge show, like a really big show because we are going deep into the happenings right now in the Middle East. The siege on Gaza is ongoing, and that comes after a really disgusting, indefensible terror attack that happened in.

Israel around a week ago. The fallout from this hasn't even come into full view yet. We don't really even know how to contextualize it quite yet. So we decided to go a little heavy on this episode with three different guests who are going to talk about the individual experiences that the people might be having there and also delve a little bit into some of the geopolitical questions that you guys might be having about the history of this and the present as well. Yeah. I'm really proud of the show because I feel like we really tried to give a larger perspective and really ask some questions that have been lingering from us and maybe fellow thought warriors as well. I will say that this show also

came together at the last minute. So I'm happy that it did. We've been trying, we promised you guys last podcast that we were going to bring someone on, but it all just kind of came together in the last 30 minutes of the podcast. And I think that we bring you different points of view and cover various issues related to what's happening right now with Israel and Palestine. Yeah. So we're not going to get into too many pleasantries. We are going to do one or two other conversations on the back end.

Quick, Rachel. Rachel said, quick. You can't help him. I'm like, what? Quick, quick. Quick, quick. Quick, quick. Quick, quick.

But we are going to be joined by Yaiyer Rosenberg of the Atlantic Shibli Telhammi, who is really well versed in the happenings in that part of the world, has advised three different presidents. His professor at the University of Maryland, also has written a handful of books on what's going on over there as well. And we'll also be joined by Daniela Greenbaum Davis, who is a former producer for The View also has contributed to places like

The Washington Post and the New York Times. She is on the show, and it's an interesting conversation with her, I think a very fruitful conversation with her, about some experiences, some that she had following a tweet that she put up on Twitter. You might have saw the tweet,

but it was about BLM and whether or not they were a terrorist organization and who she felt like should be standing with the Jewish people. That is a harder conversation. It's a more difficult conversation, but I feel like we got somewhere in the end of it. In the end, for sure.

Yeah, for sure. I think she was very open. She was willing to have to talk and nobody kowtow. So that's great stuff. And can I just say to an example of there's just a lot of tension and rightfully so when it comes to some of these, you know,

addressing this, and particularly on social media. And I just feel like the conversation showed respect on both ends and allowed room for each person to feel what they were feeling and also express those feelings and their thoughts and their opinions as well. So, you know, I think that's what makes me proud of it. Absolutely. Okay. We're going to jump

into it right now. But before we do, I want to say something. And I said this in our conversation with with Daniela. But I think it's important to say. You know, I have my own thoughts about the geopolitics involved in what's happening in Israel and Gaza right now.

I have my own thoughts about, let me not say that. Let me tell you this. I unequivocally believe in the freedom of the Palestinian people with no equivocation, zero equivocation, with people that are oppressed all over the world. I believe in their freedom of movement, their freedom of worship, their freedom to be equally represented

in the place that they are without equivocation. No equipication. So coming into this, you know, you look at the realities if you've studied or if you've been at all tangential to any movements that represent the people in Gaza and the West Bank,

the people of Palestine, which the United States and some other countries don't even recognize as a state. And you wish that people had their eye on that region for a longer amount of time. Sure. And you want to talk about that when something like this happens.

You want to talk about the daily life of somebody when something like this happens. You want to talk about it, right? You want to connect with people and go, you know, look how things are going. Over the last couple of days, I've had conversations with Jewish friends of mine. And I think, and I say this before,

I say this one when we were talking to Danielle, I think what maybe I missed, and I don't think that we did a bad job of discussing it here on higher learning or some other people missed, was that Hamas's attack, and it was Hamas' attack. It wasn't a Palestinian attack on an Israel. Hamas's attack on the people there, in addition to being destructive, disgusting, barbaric,

and any other adjective that you want to use to describe it, also stoked a really age-old fear in Jews all over the world. And I think what a lot of people were looking for was people to put their humanity first, the humanity of our Jewish brothers and sisters, and really punch through some of the feelings that we have and just go, you know what, we're sorry that happened. And that was horrible.

We're thinking about you. We care about you. We're sorry that happened and that was horrible. And I think as things happen on social media and in the world, I think sometimes we've been conditioned to run, we talked about this a little bit before, to run to silos and hit bunkers and not be people and human beings first. And as this continues in Gaza,

we're really going to have to think about how we're how we become human beings first because what's about to happen there is going to be some of the hardest times in the region some of the hardest times uh hardest things to see for people that they've that they've seen recently um and for black people who no pain and no suffering and know what it's like to move around without equal freedom and know what it's like to move around in a place where it feels like you're hunted, it's going to be triggering for them too.

So we talked to Shibley later on and he talks about leading with your humanity and your morals. And I want to challenge everybody. Everyone to do that. Everybody will do that. But if you have a job, you in your life, it wouldn't hurt to pick up the phone and call and just say,

hey man, how you doing? You know? And the same with your Palestinian friends. Just check on everyone and try to keep it together so that we can be clear-headed on what the long-term solutions in the region are. The long-term solutions in the region.

Yeah. Rachel, what's got? I can't add to thinking. to that. You said it all. I mean, literally took the words out of my mouth. I think that's beautifully said. And it makes me even more excited for people to listen to this conversation, these conversations that we have.

Are those necklaces real that you're wearing? Is it real? Real enough. Real enough. Do you get from Clares? That's why I used to get my stuff. I wouldn't even know where to find the Clares. And yes, I did used to get my stuff from Clares. But I wouldn't that the bung? You were going there, you'd get Clares. I would have it on my shit. I got my ears pierced at Clares.

Yeah. Okay, Rachel J.J. Pad, Supersonic. Let's get into the show. Did you know about one and three people with plaques psoriasis may also develop psoriotic arthritis, which causes joint pain,

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Was that your actual voice? Oh, whoa. You have a, bro. You have like a movie commercial movies. Like, when you just, were you doing that on purpose? You just said, you just said, hey, wait, do that again? It's a voice over voice, right? Yeah.

Don't want you get me talking. I start talking way too fast and that goes away. Oh, I'm like, Jesus. You just went, hello. It was like a voice of God. It was like, whoa. If this doesn't work out, you know, I can, you know, do movie trailers or something. Okay.

We are staying in the Middle East right now and talking about all the happenings going on worldwide from a really, really, really desperate situation right now in Israel and Palestine as we speak. Israel is carrying out an offensive against Hamas in Gaza. That's on the heels of one of the worst terrorist attacks in civilized history. We've seen that discussing terrorist attack over 1,000 Israelis dead, women, children, families. And now comes a political and cultural fallout that's probably going to last for a very, very long time. With us right now, we have Yair Rosenberg, a staff writer for the Atlantic,

a teller of stories, and a troller of Nazis. Self-described on Twitter as a troller of Nazis. He just wrote a piece in the Atlantic. We all read. It was absolutely gut-riching. It was called, we're all going to die

here. That was the quote that I saw there at the top of it. Yari, thank for joining us on higher learning today. My first question to you is, if I were to ask you right now, because I think a lot of people are trying to learn more about what's happening, why it happened, what's really going on. If I was to ask you right now, why is what's happening in the Middle East happening? Just that simple question. What would be your answer to it?

How long do we have? That would be my answer. It's one of those things that depending on who you're talking to, they will root it in different things. So I'm sure if you've had these conversations online with others, some people will point out that Israel has had a decades long occupation of the Palestinian people, which takes place in the West Bank. They've blockaded Gaza since Hamas took over. And this creates tremendous amounts of grievance among the Palestinian population, which seeks its own sovereignty. And then, of course, you will have other people who will point to Hamas in particular and say, look at their charter, their founding documents and their actions. Their charters is this insane cartoonish launch of anti-Semitic ideas, says that the Jews want to take over the world. It says, it quotes the protocols of the elders of Zion. A lot of the conspiracy theories we actually hear here in the United States cited by like white supremacists who shoot up, you know, Jewish places, churches, other places, are echoed in this bizarre document. And so people will point to that.

And part of what I do in my journalism is point out that both these things are true at the same time, right? You can have a group that has legitimate national aspirations and legitimate grievances with how it's been treated by what is an increasingly hard right israeli government right and at the same time there could be a tremendous amount of anti-semitism which has sort of empowered that far right is really government in response right and so these sort of things they can often feed off each other um and so yeah so why is it all happening though like that it depends what you're talking to and they'll give you different answers but those are the two things and what i would just say to people is I'm not going to be your ultimate arbiter I would just say be suspicious of people who tell you it's in

either or as opposed to a both hand right because Because when you see what Hamas just did, you're like, you might have some, like, legitimate grievances with Israeli policy, but that in no universe can justify. And I'm going to start, I'm going to warn people, then I'm going to start describing things a little graphically, but you have to understand what reporters are seeing, so which is not circulating publicly, but people should hear. Right. Executing a grandmother in her home, filming it on her cell phone and then uploading it to her Facebook page so that her family and friends would see it. Right. Kidnapping toddlers, right, and taking them to Gaza. and then posting videos of them being taunted by other children. And remember, these kids don't know where they are, and they also don't understand Arabic.

And other kids are being encouraged to taunt and bully them, and then uploading a video of that to social media. I don't recommend looking these up. You have people burned alive. You're seeing some controversy on social media about beheadings. I can tell you now that these photos, people have been beheaded. What exactly the age is? The fact that this is being debated is kind of crazy.

People have been beheaded. Many, many children and babies, were just murdered, right, with bullets, regardless of how the manner of it. People were suffocated, like when they, like, locked themselves in rooms, so they burned down the house and they suffocated. It's, you know, reporters who have gone to the scene, and you might have seen on TV, say it's like the worst thing they've ever seen. And this happened to, you mentioned 1,000 people, it's risen to 1,200, but it's actually

higher. The reason is they haven't found all the bodies, and when they do find the bodies, they have to sometimes reassemble them to identify them. They haven't done that yet. Right. So it's actually, you know, it's really hard to like grasp. That's not a national movement. There are many national movements in the world that have many, many, many grievances they don't resort to that. That's sadism that masquerades is nationalism. And it's similar to the way Hamas calls itself an Islamic movement, but I'm pretty sure most Muslims you know,

abhor this sort of stuff and think it's absolutely awful. Right. And so when a group wraps itself in a religion, we know that it doesn't mean it represents the religion. It can also wrap itself in a national cause, which doesn't mean it represents the national cause. It's kind of crucial to not allow these sorts of things to just easily mix. So that's a somewhat longer answer. Yeah, I really like and appreciate that you talked about the both and because a lot of this has been, you know, back and forth with social media, and rightfully so it's personal for so many people.

And, you know, you see some people putting on social media talking about condemning one thing, but then also speaking to the humanity of it. And I've seen a lot on social media where the people who do kind of talk about the both fan are called anti-Semitic. And I'm wondering if you could speak to that because I'm seeing a lot of that rhetoric out there. And I know you write about this. So I've seen more that the people who are called anti-Semitic are people who are rallying and saying, well, this is just what resistance looks like. This is what decolonization looks like. You thought it was going to be pretty. You thought it was just a metaphor, right? We mean by any means necessary. Right. And I think it is important to distinguish that

between someone who says, I'm just talking about both and I want to see the whole situation, right? And I may balance it in one way or another, and people can strongly disagree about that, but I'm acknowledging the anti-Semitism, right, and I'm acknowledging the brutality, and I'm not apologizing for it. I'm not excusing it. This is the worst act of anti-Jewish violence since the Holocaust, right? If you can't just say this was evil, full stop, right? There is something wrong, right? There's something wrong. And so that is what I think is properly deemed anti-Semitic. And there are people, there are rallies that are happening around the country in support of this, which is, you know, we have free speech in the country. And that's actually a very good thing. Right.

people should be allowed to do things like that, but we should also take note, right? People, you have learned something about someone who's willing to do that. But that shouldn't be conflated with someone who wants to talk about the broader picture. But people should also recognize there are intense sensitivities around this. And you might say, not just exactly the right way, and other people might misinterpret you. And there is some value in sometimes saying, I can't speak, right? Sometimes social media compels us. Everyone's talking about this thing. I must talk about it too, right? I'm now, yesterday I was a Ukraine expert, the day before I was COVID expert, right? And now I'm an Israel-Palestine expert. And you don't have to be, right? And I think

sometimes it's that you can talk and have these conversations not in public, right, with friends and colleagues and things like that. And that can be a much more healthy way. It's not just true about this, right? So it's my job as a journalist to talk about it, to explain it and to be in that space. But if you're an average person, you don't have to, you know, and you might say this looks really, really hard to discuss in public. And that's okay. I sometimes feel like that after, you know, mass shootings in the United States and other things where like everyone's just extremely raw. And do you really feel the social media conversation is making it better? Right?

And sometimes I feel like not so much. And so, yeah, so I also feel like people, if they disengage, but try to learn on their own without, you know, doing it in public, that that's perfectly fine. There are times, though, where if you don't say anything, your silence is, your silence is deafening. Your silence is your complicit to where it feels like you're compelled to take a stand and people want to know what you think. So I would distinguish between individuals, right, and institutions. So an individual, like you, you know, a random person with a Twitter feed, like you shouldn't feel like you're having, you have to have a PR operation where you're like constantly putting out statements about what you think about things. But like say you're a university, right, or a sports league and you put out statements about other events. And we have seen lots of institutions do that over the years.

So when they don't say something, right, it's noticeable. Right. Again, biggest act of anti-Jewish violence since the Holocaust and you can't get yourself to like actually say, this is just bad. Full stop. Right. People notice and they say it'll be one thing if you just didn't put out statements. And that wasn't your thing. You're like, you know, we're the NFL and we don't say anything about stuff.

Right. And, you know, that would be a stance and that would be a position. But once you've already started doing things, right, once you're like a university president, and you've been putting out statements all year about many different events around the world and emailing the student body, then, you know, people will notice when you don't. And so, yeah, but I think the average person should not feel the need, right? And I think that we sometimes do this. We look at like, why haven't you said something on your Instagram, right?

people are not the sum total of what they put on Instagram but what they put on Twitter. And I feel like that's something that we could learn in general, not just on this issue. Is there a difference? I'm slightly touchy question. Is there a difference between anti-Jewish violence

and anti-Israel violence? Is there a difference between criticizing Israel and criticizing Jews? A lot of people feel like sometimes, when they get caught into talking about the government and the state of Israel, that all of those things become attacks on Jews worldwide.

Help us understand whether or not there are differences or whether or not those things can't really exist in any bifurcated way. Yeah, so that's, those are two very good questions. So I'll ask the easy one first, so to speak, which is, is there a difference between attacks on Jews and criticism of Jews and criticism of Israel?

And the answer is obviously yes, because Israel is a state. state actor. It has guns, right, and borders and institutions, right? And just like the United States, right, and China and many others. And when you have power, you can abuse that power and people can speak to that. And you're not, you know, anti-Chinese when you criticize China, right? Now, that being said, sometimes people can lapse from criticizing China into just going after Chinese people. We see this, right? Or you are angry at some Muslim country or, you know, or an extremist group like ISIS. And then you go on and attack some Muslims in a mosque, which is a thing that happens, right? And the sadly,

has happened, you know, in North America, happens to Jews all the time, right? People are angry at something that they perceive Israel to be doing, and they attack Jews all around the world, right? So that jump you cannot make. Is there a difference between, what was the first question you asked? The first question was when you say this is Jewish violence,

and it is, I'm not, I'm not, anti-Jewish violence and anti-Israeli violence. Anti-Israeli violence, yeah. Yeah, and so that is, you know, that's a contextual question. Because sometimes people are attacking, Israelis, right, because they're attacking them because they're in the Israeli state like we just discussed. But sometimes, like in the case of Hamas, if you look at their founding documents and

everything they say about Jews and all the stuff, you attack them. And the way you can treat them like subhuman is because they're anti-Semites, right? They don't consider Jews to be human beings. They consider them to be a stain on the land. They don't want to share the land. They want the Jews gone. And so, like, you get a very different thing. And so you sort of have to be able to say, like, okay, sometimes it is going to be anti-Israeli and sometimes it's done anti-Jewish and they just happen to be the Jews who are there, right? And they're Israeli Jews. And so, and the other complicating factor is that Israel is now home to half the world's Jews total. We know a lot of Jews in general in the world. We're 2% of the American population, 0.2% of the world population. Half

the world's Jews are in Israel. If you're the sort of person who doesn't like Jews, like say you're a white supremacist, well, like Israel is like the mother load of all the Jews. So of course you're going to hate Israel, right? So there are some people who hate Israel, right, and want to hurt it or, you know, encourage violence against it because they hate Jews and they see it as like the best, you know, target, right? It's the embodiment of all the stuff they hate. And so you get this confusion where there are people having a legitimate conversation criticizing Israeli state policy and then other people who show up to that same party. And they're like, yeah, I also really hate Israel. And I also want to, you know, I don't boycott them out of existence and various other things, right?

And people who don't ask, they come to your door and you don't card them because it seems like they agree with you. But then you discover, oh, they also think the Jews did not live. Right. and they also think the Holocaust didn't happen, right? And all these other things that they bring with them, but have nothing to do with what you thought you were having the conversation about. And then they sort of, they basically pervert the conversation. They corrupt it. And then it becomes impossible because then you start like,

who is legit in this conversation, who is trying to have a reasonable, real political conversation and who is having an anti-Semitic conversation. So that's one of the reasons why it's so important to make these distinctions. And when you're engaged in criticizing the Israeli state, you have to like make sure that the people you're working with and your allies, are not coming to it from the wrong place because one, they could corrupt the conversation

that's inherently bad, but two, just, if you're thinking strategically, their anti-Semitism will be used to discredit the legitimate things you say, right? Because you might say, the Israeli government did X, Y, and Z, and this is really bad, and then somebody else in your group is posting anti-Semitic memes on Facebook,

and people will say, well, we don't have to listen to this group. Look, there's an anti-Semite in the group. So, shut up purely strategic level, right? But I also think, just to emphasize, it's morally wrong, right? And, like, we should be more careful But I think in a lot of times in politics, and I see this as a political reporter I cover, you know, American politics. People build alliances with people who share a particular thing they agree upon.

And if the person agrees with you on a key issue, you don't ask too many questions. Right. So there can, you know, because you need them. Yeah, because you need them. And like, so you could be somebody who really, really, really wants to impose more policy consequences on Israel for the Netanyahu government. And so people show up and they build your coalition and you don't ask too many questions as to why they're there. And it comes back to bite you. And you also have people who support Israel, who they're like, oh, you're really against the Palestinians.

Well, that seems fine. Right. You're really critical. Turns out you hate Muslims, but we didn't look so carefully. And too late, now you're part of our team. Right. And so you often see this sort of thing. And it would, the discourse would be a lot healthier, right, if we were able to sort of ask a few questions before we just let people into our tent.

And I have a benefit. It's easy for me to say this. I'm a journalist. I am a voice of one. And I can say whatever I want. And I'm responsible for what I say. Being an institution, obviously in building a movement, it can be a lot harder. But I think you see sometimes that we haven't built our movement so well.

And then suddenly a moment like this happens. And again, you see some people cheerleading mass murder. And then there are other people who thought they were their allies. And they're like, wait a second, that's not what I signed up for at all. Like, I'm really critical of the Israeli state, right? But that is not what I thought we were doing together. And now you're having these sort of intra-left fights. There's been some good writing on this in New York Magazine by Eric Levitz and Zach Beecham in Vox.

and this is a conversation that's happening on the left when people are realizing that some of them thought they were aligned on this, but they're not. But if you card at the door earlier, you're probably less likely to have that happened in the first place. I want to talk about the military and the government since you mentioned that. And Van asked you the why.

I want to more so go on the how because we've seen a lot of people talk about the Israeli government and be very critical of the policies of Netanyahu. And so I'm wondering, and I've seen some conflicting reports and I'm wondering what you know in regards to the failure from the military and the government with these attacks. And so I'm wondering, you know, what you know about that is, are these reports true in regards to the Israeli government was warned that something like this could happen?

And then going back to my original question, how does something like this happen? A huge question. It's the biggest failure of the Israeli state since the Yonke-Port were in 1972, that's 50 years ago, almost of the day, when Egypt surprise attacked Israel and almost won, right? And then Israel succeeded and pushed back and ended up winning that war, but it was very dicey. And they did it on the Holy State of the Jewish Year. And this attack took place on Sinatra, another important Jewish holiday, right? So there's a lot of echoes and also this incredible failure, and people want to know why. So there are initial reports that Egyptian intelligence in some way had inkling that something was going on and a few days before it weren't sent message to Netanyahu.

I haven't seen that myself, so I don't know as a reporter. It could be true. I wouldn't be surprised if there were stuff that they're going to find when they do an inquiry. Like when we looked into 9-11, we discovered that there were analysts who had heard stuff, right? But not all intelligence filters up to the right people. People say, oh, this is noise or we don't trust this source, right? A bad decision gets made somewhere in the line. And that gets to the Netanyahu government and who's actually running it, which is over the years, Netanyahu has drift. more and more to the right and had to rely more and more on hard-right parties to stay in power. He used to build more centrist governments, but then he went on trial for corruption,

and a lot of them were centrist and even right-wing parties were like, and left-wing were like, it's a parliamentary democracy, so you have to make team up with other parties to govern, and they're like, we're not going to sit with you while you're on trial. So the only people who would sit with him are these like fringe far-right parties. And these people, besides being like fringe far-right people with often, you know, racist and chauvinist views towards Palestinians. They're just, they've never been in Israeli governments. They don't have governing experience.

They're not very good at their jobs. They're mostly demagogues. And so he has a lot of cronies in this sort of government, like in charge of stuff, nominally, but not very good. And the thought was, well, the security agencies and the army, well, they run themselves, sort of. And so you could have like, and this sort of sounds sort of familiar in the United States, which is that when Donald Trump puts some really weird people

who are not always particularly competent, right, running stuff, but the state can still function. And the question is, how much can you do that before something gets lost? Something bad happens, right? And I think we could sort of perhaps draw some conclusions about what might happen to say Donald Trump wins the second term and who would be running stuff and what could fall through the cracks when you have these people on top. So on the one side, you have this massive failure. Either they missed intelligence or they just were deceived by Hamas dramatically. But on the other side, you might have read, like, in my story, you have these stories of individual acts of Israeli heroism where like, oh, like the institutions are falling down and people are getting murdered left and right. And so, like, in my story, a friend of mine who's an Israeli journalist at a left-wing paper was rescued by his 62-year-old father, right, who came and drove down and then linked up with another retired general who also just put on his uniform and came to try to help people. And you have so many stories of these things where people basically just came out of

retirement, right, and went to rescue people. And what's most remarkable about it actually is that, like, is, you know, when he's, like, stuck in, like, they're hiding. in their house, right? And they have all the lights off and they're with their, this is my journalist friend, and they're with their three-year-old and their one-year-old, and they've told them you have to be absolutely quiet. But you can't make a sound, we're not going to eat, can't go to the bathroom. And they like this for 10 hours. They lose all power. They're in the dark. And the air's getting thin because they're locked in like a safe room, which is just a concrete room. It's not like what you

think of a fancy safe room. It's just a concrete reinforced room. But they texted his father, and his father said, my mother, your mother and I will come me to get you. And he starts driving down. And the thing is they start driving down, but they keep running into other people who've been wounded or injured, right, and who need help. So they keep driving people back to the hospital. They don't just go straight. They keep helping other people, right? And they pick up, you know, these people who are, you know, attack but survive this concert where hundreds of people were massacred. And they drive them to the hospital. And eventually they give away, the mother takes the car and drives some people to the hospital. So now my friend's dad doesn't have a car. But then he finds

this other retired jail in general. And he says, my granddaughters, right, are locked up. and I need to go rescue them. I need your car. Can you come with me? And they get in this car and it's not a Jeep. It's not an armored vehicle. It's just a car like you drive to work. And they're driving through a war zone. And they drive up there. And when they get to the town, right, they meet up and they see there's a special forces unit that's preparing to go house to house to try to clear all the places of booby traps and of militants who are in there. Right. And which is the most dangerous part of counterterrorism, which is also the sort of thing we're going to see if Israel does a ground invasion of Gaza. They're going to be doing that in Gaza. And it's very scary. And often you end up with civilian casualties because people can't tell who is who. And so they go house to house, right? And, you know, as my friend tells it in the story, they know that something's happening because now there's not one kind of gunfire, there's two kind of gunfire. And it's getting closer and closer. So there's clearly a fight, right?

And then they hear a knock on the window and they hear their grandfather's voice. And his three-year-old daughter says, Sabahigia, grandfather is here. And then they knew they were safe. Do you think there will be a ground offensive in Gaza? All the signs are that yes, right? Because basically here's the thing. What does that mean for the region?

I mean, for the region, hard to say, right? If it expands, like say if other groups get involved, then specifically the group that people are looking at is Hezbollah, which is another, it's a Lebanese militia. It's not Palestinian. It doesn't have a significant territorial dispute with Israel. It's a proxy group that's funded and trained by Iran that's on Israel's northern border based in Lebanon.

they've killed a lot of people, most of them, not Jews, actually most of them, other Muslims, in service of like Bashar Assad and others, but they have a much more sophisticated rock and arsenal, much better training, and much better weaponry,

and they are so far sitting out. That's part of why Israel sort of is going into Gaza because you keep groups like that deterred, but they're in the north and Gaza's in the south, and if they decided to join in, Israel would be fighting a war on two fronts, right? And so it's hard to know if they are planning right now, that's when you're listening to, like,

President Biden speak and talk about our ironclad support for Israel, right? It's both an emotional and true thing for him, but it's also geostrategic, which is what they don't want is Israel finding a two-front war with two Iranian proxies that would essentially lead to like a sort of Israel war with Iran, because these are two Iranian funded groups that are basically being directed by Iran in different ways, right? Whether or not Iran will order this specific terrorist attack, which is totally separate, which is a subject of investigation and reporters don't know. But everyone knows it's very public, you know, that the leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas, they regularly meet with Iran and they get their money from Iran and they get some training from Iran. And so if Iran, they're trying

to warn Iran, basically, Biden's like, don't test me, right? Don't test me. They move warships in proximity. They're like, do not have Hezbollah startup. I think they don't, U.S. does not want a larger war that can draw in the U.S. It could draw in other countries, right? They want to keep it restricted to Israel-Gaza. And so if Israel goes into the ground invasion, it's just in Gaza. It would be horrific, right, for Israelis and for Palestinians, right? But it will be just horrific for them. And at this point, that is sort of part of what the diplomatic community is just trying to contain it to. But Israel can't basically, like, people come in and, like, murder 1,200 people more of your citizens in a country that's, you know, less than 10 million people, right, which is proportionally much larger than say 9-11, right? They have to stop. And like Obama, President Obama said, I think, in his tweet, dismantle Hamas. Like, you have to do, you just can't, they can't live next to that. You can't live next to the, you know, eliminationist neighbor next door. But the question is how you do that. And how you do that. And how you do that. And how.

Hamas, I said people over, you know, I think people are no longer understay in Hamas, but you shouldn't underestimate their prowess in their own turf, right, where they know the layout, right? They know where all of the hideaways are. They can booby trap things, right? And they also have built a lot of subterranean tunnels. You sometimes see this meme on social media that says, the Israelis, oh, it's nice. They have bomb shelters, but the gossans don't. The gossens do, in fact, have lots of subterranean shelters and tunnels. And you can look up articles and read about these, but they're used for Hamas fighters and for their smuggling and for, their arms caches. They don't put civilians in them, right? The civilians get on top and they basically

are in the way, right? And that's done on purpose, right, to make it harder to get to Hamas. And so they're going to have a real urban warfare advantage over the Israelis who come in, even the very highly trained Israelis. And so it's going to be a really, that's why Israel hasn't gone into the, on a ground offensive in Gaza in like 10 years, because Netanyahu does not want to do it, right? It is something that is going to lead to a lot of people dying. Both, palisians. city and Israeli. And that's why it's so tragic and scary. And I'm sure, like, if you've watched, like, you know, there's so many people in Gaza

were just caught in the middle of this and they aren't getting out. They're trying to get Egypt to open the border and work with Israel. So because people don't understand that Gaza's bordered by Israel, but also by Egypt. And so the Gaza's by both of them. And obviously, Israel's at war on its borders. So like that, like Hamas is shooting at them. They're shooting at Hamas. But you could let people out theoretically into Egypt, but Egypt is resisting, letting people in.

and it's not clear where the Israelis stand on that but Egypt itself has long resisted letting Palestinians into its territory for a whole bunch of geopolitical reasons

and so like but then where do the refugees go right in this very very small place you know and so it's like but you know but at the same time Israel can't like just sit there

and say well you just try to like genocide us we're just going to like you know drop a few bombs and airstrikes and then we'll negotiate how far do you think how far do you think it is

how far do you think it is how How far can Israel go, in your opinion, meaning what is satisfactory? What is, what do you think? I think what they're saying and what people are calling for is to just make it impossible for Hamas to ever do this again, which could mean really deposing the group. It could just mean hobbling it to the extent that it no longer can run Gaza and other groups will take over.

Remember, they're like a dictatorial group that seized power basically permanently. in 2007 never held another election. That's an important fact to understand when you say, people say, well, all Gazans are responsible for what Hamas does. I'll tell you just one story. There was a Ghazan peace activist during COVID who did a two-hour Zoom call with Israeli leftists who were like, you know, basically their dream is to have some sort of Israeli-Palestinian joint state, which is a really, especially now sort of a pipe dream, but like a peace dream. And they talk for two hours on Zoom. Nothing happened to the Israelis, of course. This activist was imprisoned for six months by Hamas, they tortured him and they forced him to divorce his wife. That's what they do

to dissenters, right? And that's what they do to maintain power, right? Because, and why were they so incensed by somebody, like, having a conversation with Israelis about living in the state together, because that's antithetical to their whole worldview. That's very dangerous to them. But, like, that's also why, like, you cannot really know what Gazans think of Hamas, because that's what they do if they told you what they really think. So some of them definitely support Hamas, but some of them don't, and can't tell you. And so no one really knows what the day after Hamas looks like in Gaza. But if they're not shooting rockets anymore and they're not, you know, making incursions

over the murder anymore, that's basically what. And Israel's going to try to recover the hostages because remember there are some 100 to 150 people kidnapped in Gaza, civilians, most of them. And, you know, it's really hard to know how they can possibly rescue them, to be honest, right? Because how can you fight a war, right? And also protect the hostages at the same time, right? It's just sort of like plays right into Hamas's hands. Right. So it could be ugly. Hamas is threatened to execute the hostages live,

live streaming it basically, which you know, you should know that if you're like using social media platforms like Instagram or TikTok. There have been notes that have been sent out to Jewish world around the world encouraging parents to like talk to their kids about it and maybe even remove the apps because you might encounter snuff films depending on how this goes. You already can't encounter horrific things without even any of that. Wow. Yeah. It's been unavoid. Yeah. Really quickly, can I just ask you? you, I know you talked about Netanyahu, and I think I heard you right, in regards to coming in, into the land, and having to attack in that way, and the lives of civilians, do you think that it's

possible that they would lift the blockade, whether it's Israel, Egypt, or both, in order to protect or refugees and allow civilians to, you know, flee rather than just be blocked in while this war is happening. So that's clearly a geostrategic objective of Anthony Blinken, right, the U.S. Secretary of State who's in the region right now, the U.S. is trying to negotiate that. Egypt has to agree with, right? Israel does, but particularly Egypt does

because Egypt controls the crossing, and apparently that hasn't happened yet. Israel cannot lift the blockade because, like, okay, people cannot come as refugees, and then Hamas people just come across the border, right? Obviously, and also the war is on that border, but the war is not on the Egyptian border, right? So that would be the place that you'd want to open and create some sort of refugee cordon.

But right now they haven't succeeded in doing it. At the same time, the ground offensive hasn't happened yet. So we'll see. And Israel is not going to go in until it's ready because you don't rush into something. As they said, there's a lot of advantages that Hamas has in that region. And no one's going to underestimate them. And so there is still time to try to figure something out. But of course, right now they're shooting rockets at Israel.

And Israel's bombing right back. And so civilians are still already. they're already caught in all of this. And like it's just and this is what gets back to the sort of another both end, which is there's nothing contradictory about concern for civilians

in Gaza, right? And concerned for all of the Israelis who've been massacred traumatized and these Israelis who are kidnapped. That's in fact, expressions in my mind of the same values. Last question. Israel has cut off electricity fuel

and the Gazans are obviously something. They're running out of medical supplies. The hospitals are barren at this point. It's a humanitarian nightmare. Some people even wondering whether or not that in it of itself is a violation of international law. Your thoughts on that.

Your thoughts on the strategy of starving the people out. So the idea is to basically deprive Hamas of as many resources as possible. you know, that will be what if you ask, you know, strategic planners, that's what they're doing. Like, a siege means a siege, right? And we're not going to, you know, give them assets, especially if, like, they're going to be planning booey traps or setting stuff up. We want to make it really hard for them to do stuff like that,

but it inevitably falls upon everybody else as well. As to international law, you should ask a legal expert, and I'm sure there will be plenty weighing in on the tactics of everything that happens in the days ahead. But I will say this does tell you something about Hamas, because once again, like, you may notice, like, wait a second, they're getting all their water, right, and all of their electricity and a bunch of these other things from Israel, right? This enemy state, what is going on? And once again, it's because Hamas doesn't govern the strip, right? They don't serve the people. They didn't build infrastructure. They had many, many years to actually build things for their people. And instead, they spent it building rockets in a worn machine and a subterranean tunnel, you know, maze that they can use. And so what you end up with is now, like, when Israel, you're relying on Israel for all these things, Israel can cut them off. Right. And, like, there were proposals to do all sorts of stuff to build in Gaza, like the economy and various other things. And Hamas in general just sort of skims all over money, right, and takes the stuff and then uses it for what they want. There's this bunker's video where they, like, they posted this themselves. Hamas was celebrating it.

They were showing off how they build rockets despite the blockade. They were digging up pipes in Gaza and turning them into rockets, which on the one hand is ingenious. And on the other hand is, of course, dismantling infrastructure, right, in order to make a war machine. And so, you know, it's sort of this like horrible situation that's been building for a very long time. And like now it all comes to a head. There you are. Thank you, brother. We appreciate you, man.

We appreciate your reporting. We appreciate you making the time for us. No, it's a tough time. Where can they catch you? Where can they find you? So I write for the Atlantic. So you'll see my stuff at the Atlantic.com. I have a newsletter, which is called deep stettel, which is a word I should spell.

S-H-T-L. It's Yiddish, exactly well-recognized. And so, and I don't usually write, and here's the thing, and this is, you know, I write about World Events, so I cover it. So I don't usually write about this or I cover many other things, many things that I think are far less depressing. You know, and then I'm on all the social media sites,

you know, though if you're not on them, as, you know, you're probably doing it better than me. All right, man, we appreciate you making time for us today on higher learning, but I appreciate the good work. Well, thank you for having me on and for the questions. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Everyone knows winter is the MVP and making a mess. You don't need WeatherTech floor liners in the summer unless you hit the beach or go camping.

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internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services, plus 24-7 U.S.-based support. Millions of business owners already trust Spectrum Business. So visit Spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. continuing our coverage of the happenings right now over in the Middle East. As we speak, things are dire, very serious for the guys and people. Also, the Israeli people, the Jews all over the world, are reeling from an unprecedented terror attack. There's left over 1,000. I think the number is up to 1,200 Jews, Israelis dead.

and, you know, just untold carnage from a surprise attack from Hamas. We have someone joining us right now, another guest. Shibli Talami, who is incredibly distinguished here, the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development, a distinguished scholar and the director of the University of Maryland's

Critical Issues poll, wrote the book, The World Through Arab Eyes. So we appreciate you joining us on higher learning today. I guess that's my first question. The name of your book is very poignant, The World Through Arab Eyes. How do you think Arab eyes see right now

all over the world what's happening in Gaza and Israel? First of all, you know, this is a bloody time, a very, very painful wartime. And we know during war, the hearts hardened. and you focus only on your own and you don't focus on the other. And I want to say that from my perspective, when I'm looking at what's happening now, the painful killings,

the most striking thing is the level of innocent civilian casualties that are just shocking. There is no cause that justifies targeting civilians or recklessly undermining them or jeopardizing them. And I think it doesn't matter whether it's Israelis or Palestinians. We need to find a way to spare civilians. There are political conflict that had to be fought, but you have to make sure you minimize civilian casualties.

In the last five days, so far, we have 12,000 people dead or wounded between Palestinians and Israelis. about over 76,000 Palestinians and over 7,600 Palestinians and over 4,200 Israelis. There are 300,000 Palestinians who have been rendered homeless from the bombings on Gaza that followed Hamas' attack. 300,000, and most of these are people who have, most of whom are already refugees or descendants of refugees from 1948 from their original homes in what is now central Israel. And they're rendered homeless again. And there'll be thousands more, trust me, unfortunately, before this is over. So there's a context.

The context is it's not just about Hamas and the fighting and what happened in Israel and the surprise, which is ugly enough, but it is the political conflict that surrounds this issue, 56 years of occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, and no end in sight, and rising settler violence in the West Bank. So when the Arab population is looking at it, they're looking at it through the prism of the pain of the Palestinians. And so they empathize and hearts hardened toward Israeli casualties. As we see in Israel, just after this attack, which was resulted in thousands of casualties, what you see is many Israelis say carpet bomb, destroy. And we see the result, obviously, in how many casualties, civilian casualties have been on the other side.

So what we need is political leaders who rise above this pain, who rise above, who rise above the demonization, who arise above the hardening of the hearts, who focus on the human condition. There's time for politics. We need to deal with it, the strategy. But right now, we shouldn't differentiate between a Jewish victim and an Arab victim, an Israeli victim and Palestinian victim. Color shouldn't be the fact. This is a human issue, and we need to focus on that. And our leaders need to speak with moral authority, not just against the violence that killed innocent Israeli civilians, which is awful and must be stopped and condemned. But we cannot allow the reckless endangerment of so many civilians in Gaza right now. There's a humanitarian disaster unfolding that my last

for generations. And so we need to speak with a single moral authority on this. When you see the secretary, U.S. Secretary of State who's over there today and made a statement, a very personal statement in his connection to his stepfather and his grandfather and then being Jewish. And you see him standing next to Netanyahu. I'm wondering what do these statements, and even that coupled with President Biden's statement, what do these statements say? how are these interpreted from the Arab world? And in any way, does their allegiance or their allyship stoke any fires? Well, first of all, the Secretary of State is a fine man. He's an American. And we all have, you know, all Americans, whether the Jewish or Arab, the black or white, we're all Americans. And he only represents the United States of America. Has every right to his

history to his feelings and this is a time where he can invoke that. That's that's that should, there's nothing wrong with that honestly. I think this is he's speaking for the United States. I think the question is how is seen on the other side. There will be people to exploit that obviously. And by the way, I don't think the Secretary of State makes the policy. I mean, by the way, I mean, right now on this issue, Israel Palestine, and I've written, as you know, you've, you've only mentioned one book. I've written three books on American foreign policy in the Middle East. I've advised four different American administration to Republican and two Democrats. So I'm looking at it through the American. I'm an American, obviously, and I'm looking at it

through the prism. I'm an Arab American, but I'm looking at it through the prism of, of, you know, American foreign policy. I think that presidents make policy on this issue, because it's politically too overwhelming for anybody else. And on this particular issue, the president who I've known over the years, both when he was a senator and he was vice president, he has his very strong views on this issue. And he has been the one who's guiding policy. And of course, he's now in a presidential campaign. So no one touches this issue except for him. So he's only representing the president when he's doing that. And he can invoke his own personal. But that's not the way necessarily it'll be received by some who want to pick issues with him about his identity.

I'm going to ask you to do something that is very layered, and if you can even do it in an bridged way, that's fine. If you want to punt on it, that's fine as well. For people who don't understand the history of the animus in this region, could you give them a brief rundown of what has happened to get things to this point since around for? or even before them, there are so many people that are saying things like we have, we had a fantastic conversation on this podcast earlier on with someone who said, you know, this is thousands and thousands of years old. And it's just not, right?

So for people that don't understand the history contextually of what's happening here, could you give them an expert or brief rundown of how things got to this point? No, because there's no brief history that can do just. to the story. What I will say, though, is that American policy has been based theoretically on the idea of two-state solution. That is that Israel came to occupy territories that it now holds, including the West Bank and Gaza, that are theoretically under, including Gaza, which is theoretically under Israeli occupation. And the U.S. has pushed, the U.S. and the international community for now a couple of decades have pushed for the establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza side by side

with Israel. That has become practically impossible because my most recent book that you can see up on the shelf is called the one state reality, but is Israel-Palestan? It's a co-edited with three other scholars. It just becomes so impossible to have because the encroachment of Israeli settlements, particularly, That's one thing that were built on the occupied territory, which is illegally under international law. I was there last week. They're all over the place. I mean, cities like Bethlehem and Bezahur, Bejala, they're not too far from Jerusalem. They're surrounded by settlements, really impossible to figure out how you can separate them to create a separate state.

They're like Bandu stands across the entire West Bank right now. So I think what, you know, everybody's been grappling with this for some fun. That's why my colleagues and I put together this project led to the book about the one-state reality. Right now we need to focus on equality. We need to focus on people getting dignified rights, getting freedom, whatever political entity emerges, whether it's a confederation, two states, one state, we need to focus on freedom for both people, freedom for Palestinians, freedom for Israelis. But this is not going to be a time for it, obviously, because right now we're in the middle of a disaster,

and this disaster is going to create new conditions. We don't really yet know what they're going to look like. Obviously, in Gaza, unless somebody intervenes to stop it, we can have a calamity on a new scale that will have be of historic proportions that might redefine the conflict one more time. And that's even without what might still happen, which is this war expanding to include Hezbollah in the north. Hezbollah is a very powerful organization that's tied to Iran. It's much more powerful than Hamas. They are not about to enter the war.

It's not in their interest. It's not in the Israeli interest. Everybody's trying to prevent that from happening. But they could be dragged into it because of the scale of fighting in Gaza and victim had pressure, public opinion, mistakes of signaling. They could be dragged in. And if they dragged in, you have another devastating war in the North for both Israelis and especially Lebanese. and most of the victims, trust me, will always be civilian. Helpless civilians get hurt the most.

And that's before even thinking about the possibility of involvement from Iran or the U.S. being drawn in. So this is not a small event. This is not a small event. It's obviously a devastating event in terms of human terms, but it's probably a historic event that's going to reshape the conflict in some form. What's the responsibility in the United States to keep this contained and also to urge Israel to show restraint in its response to the terrible terrorist attacks that happened on the soil? Well, the first thing is the moral voice. We have to be consistent. We can't say, you know, we have to be consistent. We can't say, you know, it's wrong to attack Israeli civilians and at the same time not counsel restraint when the victims, civilian victims are Palestinian.

We can't do that. We've got to speak. So far, the president has not used a single word of restraint. You've got 7,600 people dead and wounded, 300 people becoming homeless. And we have not heard one word from the president of the United States. That is wrong. That is wrong. We, he's got to speak with a clear moral foot. It's not about Hamas. You can attack Hamas. You could do whatever you want with Hamas, that doesn't absolve you from the responsibility to protect civilians, to minimize civilian casualties. It doesn't absolve you from taking a moral view that there should be restraint. And so, yes, I think the president so far has failed in his stand, moral stand, in terms of condemning any attacks on civilians, whether they're Israeli or Palestinian.

We need to do that. He was right to attack Hamas, to say to the Israeli people on the day of, you know, of vulnerability to call them and say, I'm with you. People need to hear it when they feel attacked and vulnerable. Sure, sure, sure. But you've got to do it for both Israelis and Arabs. It doesn't matter.

The color of your skin shouldn't matter for, you know, this is a human condition. and this is a moral position and it has to be absolutely clear. Now, I also would say that, you know, the administration has not understood how explosive this situation has been. I have been saying this, I've been writing,

and I have friends in this administration, I like them, I respect them, I've counseled them, and it's not that they didn't know, they just didn't do it. And right now, there is no way of avoiding this issue. They thought this issue could be swept. Israel, Palestine, could be quietly handled and managed. It has a way of coming back. Maybe people thought it was going to be kind of more of a quiet issue that is under the radar screen.

But right now, it's front and center. And they can't just go to addressing the current crisis. They're going to have to come up with a way to think bigger, because this is not going to away. The fact that, you know, as you pointed out, President Biden hasn't, you know, talked about restraint, do you think that that's telling of what's to come in regards to the Palestinians that are trapped there in Gaza as far as the United States providing assistance to help them lift the blockade or even in regards to providing resources to the civilians who don't have them at all at this point? You know, right now you can't even get

ambulances to go to save people because the level of destruction right now, just the bombings, between the buildings and the roads and the infrastructure and the water and the electricity and the hospitals, ambulances are not even able to get to the victims right now. And there are like hundreds of them being produced by the hour. I mean, we're talking about, again, when you look at the scale of what happened in five days, for both sides is really a huge scale. But Gaza is under constant bombardment. So it's impossible even for aid organizations, whether it's UN or other aid agencies or American aid or any of the groups that are out there to help and come.

They can't even get in there. They can't provide. So they need to be a pause in the bombing, first of all. The first thing, there's no way for the civilians to go. They're there. And you can't just say, well, let's get a safe. zone for them. Well, they can't even get to a safe zone. They can't even get to a hospital. They can't even get to. So you need to have, and only the United States can do that, because

Israel is entirely dependent on the United States. It needs American support. And the U.S. has to use its moral authority to do this. Last question for you. We really appreciate you being so generous with your time and given us such insight. we had on Yarra Rosenberg from the Atlantic a little earlier, and I asked him this question about the condition of a civilian life in Gaza right now, being that Israel has cut off of food, excuse me, fuel, electricity, so many other things that obviously keep a civilization going, and that means that the hospitals are running out of the ability to administer care.

They're running out of food, running out, tons of things over there. He said that partly that's due to Hamas' influence in the region, that the fact that Gaza is still relying on Israel for its fuel, for its electricity, for its water, things like that are indicative of the fact that Hamas has not built the proper infrastructure in Gaza for the time that they have been running Gaza since around 2005, 2007, I think it is, do you agree with that assessment? Well, first, I haven't heard what he said, so I'm not going to respond to him, but I could tell you this. Anybody who thinks Gaza was paradise before Hamas took over doesn't understand this. Hamas was still under occupation long before Gaza took over. The Palestinians were trying to build infrastructure and to get independence,

including a port and an airport and to become more independent from their dependence on Israelis, long before Hamas took it never happened, never happened. The West Bank is not under Hamas control. They don't have independence. So I think, you know, that's obviously, you know, rhetorical. Of course, Hamas made things worse because of the kind of organization it is, for sure. But that's not the reason for the continuation of the occupation of control. I mean, because, as I said, in the West Bank,

that that's not what they it's not under control and and the period before they they came to the power in 2006 you know not in it's just nothing happened to to get more autonomy and independence

by the way I wasn't trying to get you guys to go back and forth I was just trying to just make sure no I'm not responding to to him because I don't know what he said as I said I don't I'm not responding I'm telling you what the reality is about Hamas's rule it's a you know not

I mean the the occupation problem goes way beyond Hamas and you know before and after I think that's an important distinction to make I just want to say because a lot of people are just making it seem like it started when Hamas got into

was elected into office we're going to leave it right there Shidley thank you for coming on and you know talking about this. I know it's a tough time, and it probably will be tougher for some time. Yes, you're right. Yeah, but we really do appreciate you being so generous with you time and join us on higher learning. Thank you very much. My pleasure. Thanks for hosting me. Thank you. Take care. This episode is brought to you by Sweet Green. The day doesn't ask for permission. Lunch window? Gone before you saw it coming.

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Ask your doctor about trim fire. Tap this ad to learn more about trim fire, including important safety information. Okay. We are nearly a week in to just really a harrowing and dangerous destabilizing situation after a deadly and disgusting terrorist attack took place on Israeli soil. almost a week ago now. And tensions are running high all over the world. In every sector of the world, this is a conversation that really has people emotionally just bereft.

There's no way to say it. The emotions are running high. It seems like every conversation is a high-stakes conversation. We're going to bring in somebody right now. We have joining this. Daniela Greenbaum Davis, who is a really accomplished professional, an Emmy winning producer,

formerly of the view of Rachel is right now, a writer and a columnist for publications such as The Spectator in New York Times, Washington Post, wow, and the Wall Street Journal. All of the gold standards right there in American press. There was a tweet earlier this week that Ms. Davis, who joins us on Higher Learning right now, put out that I think we want to talk

about and I'm I'm pretty sure that you want to talk about it to Danielle. So we appreciate you joining us on higher learning. Before we get into the conversation, I just wanted to read to tweet. Obviously this is probably in response to some of the support or non-support that people in the Jewish community are feeling from certain aspects outside of the Jewish community. The tweet read like this, Jews marched in Selma, Jews marched for George Floyd, Jews showed up for Black Lives Matter. BLM is a disgrace. We will all still be there for you guys next time because that's who we are. But now we know who you are. Then there was a clarification tweet that came after

this written by Daniela that let it be known that the you in that situation is BLM. The black community that showed up for us. We see you and we thank you. BLM is a terrorist organization. And that's the you we now know. Now I'm assuming, Daniela, that that That tweet comes in response to a tweet that was sent out by Black Lives Matter Chicago that show a pretty indefensible graphic of the silhouette of a parachute. In case people don't know, part of what Hamas used to get over the fence there and attack people in Israel, particularly at a music festival, as they paraglided in. And it said, I stand with Palestine.

And that really, really upset a lot of people. I'm assuming that you were responding to that when you sent that tweet. That's correct. Now, I'll be honest, when I read the tweet, I was offended. Particularly with the first tweet, and I'll tell you why. It doesn't seem like you're talking about BLN. When you say Jews marched in Selma, Jews marched for George Floyd, well, obviously Black Lives Matter wasn't at Selim. So that makes it seem as if you're in some way

castigating the entire black community, but you're saying that that's not how you meant the tweet. That's exactly why I clarified right away. I have had a lot of support from black allies in the last week, and I think the vast majority of black organizations and black individuals have shown up for their Jewish brothers and sisters. And so I wanted to clarify my words were about BLM, I want to give some context here, which is this.

We all know the famous kind of image of MLK and Heschel marching hand in hand. What a lot of people don't know about Heschel is that he comes from a very small, Haschelic dynasty called Capitianz. My grandfather was part of the Capitianz community in Vienna, Austria, where he lived before he fled here from the Nazis right before the Anschlis. and we grew up. The idea of supporting other minority communities, the idea that allies need to work together,

that was baked into my education, my blood way before intersectionality was a cool term that we all used to talk about it. And right now, I am getting inundated with emails, texts, calls, pictures of burned babies, of body bags that are too small, of images of women with bloody pants, of videos that you can watch yourself, as long as you have someone next to you who can translate the Arabic, of Klamas admitting it, enjoying it, reporting it, gleefully.

And I think that as a white person, and I say that in the white-black context, I don't believe Jews are really white, we don't need to get into it in this conversation. But if the definition is white, black, obviously I'm white. Actually, I think it does have a place in this conversation. I do. But I'm saying, like, this is a broader conversation. As someone who is not black, when George Floyd happened, the first thing I did was turn to black people around me and say, what do you need? And I can't begin to imagine how you're feeling. And on an individual level, I feel like that is totally happening with Black allies. And I thank them. And I thank you. Unfortunately, BLM, and I get that it's decentralized and no one knows who's in charge and which chapter speaks for who. Unfortunately, BLM is a buzzword for a lot of people.

And to a lot of people, it feels like representation. That's kind of, it's this big umbrella. And with BLM, orbs and pages that have all these followers, tweeting things out there that are supporting and that very clearly make clear that it's all good that people are paragliding in and doing the things that they're doing. I don't know how else to react to that other than to say that if you support terrorism, you're a terrorist. So that's clear. Just but and and you you make it clear that between Van and I, that's not the case. But, you know, you, I would think that you thought about the tweet that you put out. You carefully thought about your words and how you wanted to say them.

And, you know, I don't take away from, you know, the terrible, terroristic things that Hamas is doing. It's awful. Van and I have both condemned the terrorist acts that are happening. But when I hear you talk about unity and about how blacks and Jews come together and, you know, you even, you know, shared that, that history and that story and you talk about, you know, what you did during Black Lives Matter, when you see a tweet like that, I'm wondering. what you wanted to accomplish because the end goal could not have been unity. It was a very divisive tweet. And so I'm wondering what you thought the goal was going to be and how that kind of tweet could bring black people and Jewish people together. It's really simple. I think any black person who doesn't feel represented by that tweet should come out and say, this doesn't

represent me. And if this is what BLM is representing, then BLM is. doesn't represent me. There are also small fringe Jewish organizations that are out there saying crazy shit. Jewish Boys for Peace is one of them. They're saying things that I don't agree with at all about the conflict right now. I make very clear when asked and when not when not asked, this doesn't represent me. I have nothing to do with this. And that's not the responsibility of every black person in the entire world. I get that. Lots of us have groups that speak for us and don't speak for us, I'm not suggesting that that's a responsibility, but right now your Jewish and brothers and sisters are in deeper crisis than we've ever been

since the Holocaust, and we are begging you, begging you to please clarify that the things that are coming out of BLM Chicago is not the BLM that we want everybody supporting. Because we all want to support the idea that black lives matter. And I just think, I understand what you're saying, but I think that, it's not the responsibility to clarify your tweet. And it just felt like you were fueling the fires of maybe certain perceptions that people have. Because you didn't say BLM Chicago. You said BLM.

And for people who aren't aware that it's BLM Chicago and not just BLM as a whole or just black people in general, which is why you had to clarify the tweet, it just seems to be so much. It's one thing, like, when I hear you talk right now and you're like, this is what we need from you, I hear you. I hear you. But when you put out a tweet like that, it takes away from it. And so, you know,

I don't think it's the responsibility of black people to say, that's not us. I think there's a responsibility to say, this is what we need from you. I'm just going to show you some of the things that I'm getting

as we're talking from people that I personally have a relationship with that are on the ground cleaning up. This is a body of a baby. This is a burned body of a child. That's obviously a picture of Arabic writing. So let me

give what I think is some wisdom or some context that I've gotten from a lot of my friends in the last couple of days. Can I just interrupt for one? Can I just interrupt for one? Absolutely.

Certainly, yeah. On the other side of my family, my dad's mom, she's a Holocaust survivor. I've written about her a lot of times. She survived death marches, forced labor. She was finally liberated

from Bergen-Belsen by the British Army in 1945. And like basically every survivor, it was a mix of luck, God, and someone not Jewish, who at some point did something to help. The first person that helped her was a person that worked for her father when they were still living in Lithuania. This was right as the Nazis rolled in who handed her across to put around her neck and said, walk out of the ghetto with me right now, pretend you're my child, I'm going to hide you. she walked a couple blocks with her and then started having what we now would call a panic attack of course my grandmother in Yiddish did not know what it was then right did not have that language and was like I'm Jewish I'm not going to like hi do I am went back into the ghetto had the six

hardest years of four hardest years of the life I don't remember what year that was my point is when we're there for each other the people that want all of us on this call to suffer have a lot harder time doing it. And so if you're telling me right now that those tweets are not helping activate the black community, then they'll come down. What I'm telling you right now is that as your Jewish sister, I never thought in my lifetime

that the things my grandparents told me they experienced that I would ever grapple with. I thought I'm living in America. I grew up on the Upper East Side of New York. I am safe and secure. I never liked the idea of Jewish privilege because I had my grandparents stories, but it was imprinted.

It wasn't my life. I was okay, and I never felt unsafe as a Jew until the last few years in this country. We need help and we need support, and I want to acknowledge that in the coming weeks, there's also going to be devastation coming out of Gaza.

there's a war right now. And when that happens, there needs to be clarity about how this war started and how Hamas is responsible for the devastation on both sides. There are activists among the kidnapped activists who are beyond progressive, beyond allied with the Palestinian people. There's one, in fact, who's going around. She's an older woman, maybe in her 70s. I believe she's Canadian. I can drop the link here later. My point is, this is crossing the boundaries of women, children, elderly survivors, people on your side politically, people not on your side politically. There was a video going around of some of the kidnapped and the guys are saying in Arabic, you're here because of Netanyahu. I don't know if I can curse, but he's saying F. Netanyahu.

And the families are like, we hate Netanyahu. That's not what, you know, we're on your side here. And not to just, nobody's justified, but my point is this is crossing all the lines, however you feel about any of this, it's babies, it's children, it's people on all sides of the politics. Okay. Well said.

So I'm going to say a couple of things here. I'm going to talk for a little bit. So there is something that I do understand over the last couple of days. That in moments like this where things are so dire. What we all have to do is struggle to find our humanity. And what that means sometimes is push past political beliefs,

push past what our intellectual understanding of the situation tells us to just be people. So I think what a lot of my Jewish friends wanted was they wanted time to emote time to hurt and time to feel about what happened last Friday. They wanted time to be people. And they wanted a lot of people that have all kinds of beliefs about what's going on over there to just pump the brakes for one second and understand that they were hurting. Understand that people came in and killed people indiscriminately, that they took hostages, that this is the worst it's been for us.

and they wanted that for a second. I think that a lot of people that have been paying attention to or had solidarity with the Palestinian people for a long time, that their hearts have been hardened to that plight. I think that that's that realization is real. And I think it's fair and appropriate and the human thing to do to take a second and go, look at the pain that's being caused for the worldwide diaspora of Jewish people. Like look at that.

Take a second. Take that in and understand that while we're talking about these numbers and figures are actually lives being lost. And because of that, maybe you need to call and check in on your friends. Maybe you need to let people know that this isn't the way. Maybe you need to understand that this is actual terrorism. Maybe you need to know all of that stuff, right? For me, I am a huge advocate of the Palestinian people. and the way I look at this is that nothing that Hamas did advances their cause.

It is nothing that Hamas did advances their cause. It doesn't advance their cause at all. And so it's a failure. It's disgusting. It's the worst it can possibly get. Like you can't look at it any other way. That's a fact. I just want to interrupt to say thank you for saying that.

And I agree with all of that. There's something interesting here, though, Daniela, that I want to make sure that you come away from this conversation. Okay. That kinship that black people and Jewish people that Jewish people sometimes feel that they have with black people, we don't feel it by and large. Like even in your discussion of how you grew up, we said grew up on the Upper East Side and all the like. Like, for example, you say that you didn't see a lot of black people condemning the tweet. I wonder how many black people you follow because I saw black people that a lot of people would not think would, like, will come down on the tweet.

People that have reputates like Mark Lamont Hill, a friend of mine who literally lost his job at CNN, right, for saying something that people perceived as being anti-Semitic. I saw him denounce the tweet. I saw Franklin Leonard denounced the tweet. I saw David Dennis denounced the tweet. I saw all types of people get at them, like people going, nah, that's not the way. No one that I know that has a platform that you would be that. So would take up for that, would defend that tweet.

And so sometimes there are these baked in separations, even when you talk about like the way you grew up. You grew up on the Upper East Side and I wonder how many black people grew up in your neighborhood. I wonder how much solidarity there was between, you and black people growing up there. I wonder sometimes how- that's exactly what I'm trying to say that I grew up personally

like feeling very safe. I grew up in a good neighborhood. I didn't grow up and I'm owning that. I'm grateful for that. But what I'm saying is this is a watershed moment where every Jew, no matter where they live, no matter how secure they felt, is recognizing that nowhere,

not even in the state that we think is all there only for the purpose of us being secure, are we safe? And I hear everything that you're saying and I appreciate that and I did see to your point a lot of people that I was surprised and extremely heartened to see call that out. One of the things

that I think people who are not part of the black community really struggle with, myself included, is that Black Lives Matter purports to speak for the black community. There's no face. Nobody knows who it is. Daniel, but listen, but listen, but listen, for a second.

just and I'll finish up after this like even that right there the belief that black lives matter is an entity that first of all is bifurcated trafficated that's black lives matter LA that's black lives matter Chicago this black lives matter boom which daniel admitted right right so but just just the fact that that would be in some way that they would be some way homogenous with like 40 million people to me is indicative of the lack of familiarity that they have with the American black diaspora. Like, there are to be honest with you,

at this point, black people don't even like Black Lives Matter like that. Like they, I mean, I'm just being for real. They don't. The organizations. The organization. Not the tournament. But when we all get, like when we, oh, you're all on the same page.

Right. I mean, I don't have, like, but when we get all lumped in like that and when our history gets thrown back up in our faces. Because just to let you know, the ghettos that everybody's been in or was in, we're still in them. We're still in those ghettos today. We're in the ghetto. Like, we're still as poor as we were as in relation to white people as we were in the 1960s. We still, our health care is still poor. We're still living in bombed out places in Chicago and South Badd and Roald from. It's still going on. We haven't had any economic, social or justice or, or, or, um, or a political

ascension. It hasn't really happened for us. So when something happens halfway around the world and we get drawn into it, well, we start to look around and go, well, really, who has been with us for the last 50 years? I know that people march. I know that they're in Mississippi, four people were killed. Three of them were Jewish. The Dr. King was bankrupted largely by a Jewish man. I know that, but like for the time that we've been hooked on drugs and like in these communities and like couldn't find jobs and couldn't find like who has really been with us. And it kind of feels if you're telling me that you don't feel like the Jewish community has been with you through that. That's devastating for me because no one has. I'm not I'm not singling out the Jewish community.

Okay. Because I can tell you within the Jewish community, one of the things we talk about all the time is that. the fact that of Jewish philanthropic dollars, only 13% go to Jewish causes, meaning almost 90% of the charity that Jews give is not going to Jewish organizations. It either goes to other communities or to things like universities and colleges and hospitals and things that benefit everybody. And as a very small community, they're only what a tiny amount of us given the rest of the world population. that's something we talk about all the time internally,

is that good or bad. But it is the number. It's almost 90% of Jewish charity does not go to Jewish causes. So I can tell you that every Jew that I know, both with their finances, with their goals, with their time, with their activism,

is love your neighbor like yourself. Remember the stranger because you were strangers in Egypt. I mean, our entire being is to recognize that minorities need to stick together. And if you're telling me that you don't feel that, then I hope when this calms down, you and I can sit together for like a week and a half and figure out how to bring our communities more together. Because I am shocked if that's how you feel. And I want to fix it and do more and also understand where the gap in communication is. Because I can tell you, we feel like we're showing up.

if we're not, tell us where to show up differently. I'm going to worry. I'm going to let Rachel jump in real quick. Go ahead. Say what you want to say. No, no. Say that part of me. Look, look.

I don't want to move this off of while we're here because I want to make sure that, because a lot of conversations are going to be spawned from like while we're here. Even talking about people understanding why this happened, there will be a lot of people that would fight you on the reasons why this actually happened. The reason why there are a thousand Jews dead right now, Babi's families, it's because of Hamas. That is 1,000 percent. Hamas did that and Hamas is responsible for that, right?

Right. The reason why there's militancy in the region, you could have a geopolitical discussion about that that would last three or four days and take us all the way back to the Brits, three different wars. It'll probably take us back about 2,000 years. I don't think it's, I don't think. I don't think it takes us back 2,000 years

because there wasn't really even in the Islam 2,000 years ago. But I think it would take us back. But there were Jews. And I would object to your term militancy. What's going on now is terrorism. And I think we should be really about our terms. That's not what he's saying.

He's saying terrorism is to the Hamas. But Hamas had wasn't born on Friday. Hamas has been in the region for a long time. And I understand. And this is, I know, but Daniel, before there was Hamas, there was Black September. before there was Black September.

There was... I understand. There's always... It was a group there and that's because the conditions there haven't really borne anything else. What I would like to say, though, is that Hamas,

which is doing the things now that it seems like all of us on the call are agreed are terrorism, inexcusable, not a way to advance anybody's interests. Is that a fair summary of where we all are on what's happened? No doubt.

Okay. Hamas has been in the region and operational since before Friday and Saturday. So all I'm trying to say is for all of the people that are saying, there's context that goes back there a long time, whether you want to say to the Brits or 2,000 years or whatever, of course there is. But I would also say, remember that along with that context,

the group that's responsible for this has been doing things in this region for a long time. And Israelis have been doing everything they can to keep people, including Arabs who have been Israel saved. By the way, among the dead, we already know, are Bedouin Arabs, our Arab Israelis. It's not like this is affecting just people that they're intending to take out. Among the dead are people from, I think it's up to 25 different countries. This is a widespread, completely indiscriminate slaughter. And honestly, Van, I'm...

No, go ahead. I'm finished. I'm not trying to stop you. Go ahead. I think what's really hard for people who aren't, I think what's hard for people who are rational. And I think that's probably all of us on this call is to understand and get in the mind of someone who's not rational. So the three of us here can sit here and say, what Hamas is doing is never going to help the Palestinians achieve what they want.

Hamas probably doesn't believe that, right? They're probably doing this thinking it will achieve what the Palestinians want. And at a certain point, when you're operating with actors who have no rationality and no morality. There's not much that can be done other than to completely take them out, which is why, unfortunately, what's about to happen in Gaza is going to be really devastating to civilians on both sides. And there's not a single Israeli that I know that's not gut-wrenched about what that's going to look like. Let me ask you about that because, you know, one of the things that, I guess, you know, again, we've all agreed about the things that we've agreed about on this call.

But, you know, there's a lot of, if you reference the innocent civilians that I've seen, if you reference the innocent civilians on both sides, if you talk about the fact that, you know, the Israelis are sending bombs over there and rockets over there. And it is hitting residents where innocent women and children are. being impacted by that. And then there's also the fact that there's a blockade and they're not allowed to leave. So, you know, I've seen some things on the news where Israeli military is saying, well, we're giving them warning, but there's nowhere for them to go. They're trapped. So what do you say about that for those innocent civilians that are caught in the middle?

Because I think we can both agree that when it comes to war and we both agree in regards to humanity, there are, it's the people that become impacted by this and are innocent in it all. First of all, absolutely. And it's a really important question. I want to say one quick thing on the political situation. And then I'm going to get into the much harder, broader question of the humanity and the civilian cost. On the blockade, everybody seems to be forgetting that there are two countries responsible for the blockade of Gaza. There's Egypt and there's Israel. The Egyptians are, nobody seems to be asking them, why aren't you? opening your border with Gaza, Israelis are asking, Americans are asking, they're saying,

opening a corridor, take as many civilians as you can, we are, everybody that is kind of representing here how I'm thinking about the issue that I'm aware of on both the Israeli and American sides are saying to the Egyptians, please work with us to figure out logistics of opening a corridor has taken as many civilians as possible because it's about to get really fucking ugly in Gaza. That's the first thing. You have to remember, though, the reason the Egyptians aren't doing it, It's because they've seen what Khamas has just done and they know what Kamaas has been doing for years. It's the reason Egypt maintains a blockade of Gaza in the first place. They don't want any of that shit in their country.

They don't want to have Egyptians for the way that what's going on. So that's the first thing I want to say about the blockade. In terms of civilians, I'm going to say it again. And I think it's really important that Jews and Israelis continue to be like super just direct about this. In the coming days and weeks, there are going to be a lot of civilians on both sides, including on the Palestinian side, that are hurt and that are killed, and it is an absolute tragedy. That is like just the first thing to say. The second thing to say is war is not an episode of band of brothers. In war, civilians die. We all know that. The difference between what Israel is doing

and what Hamas is doing is that Hamas has targeted civilians. They have kidnapped civilians. They have raped civilians. They are going out there and amplify. buying this. If you guys want to check out after this call, there is two telegram channels, both called Gaza. One has like 140,000 people in it as of yesterday. The other has 300,000. And it's all people that are in Gaza and that were part of the kidnapping, that are uploading things in real time that they're doing. And it is devastating and triggering and horrible. So what I would say, because, yeah, a lot of civilians are about to either get injured or hurt, and it is devastating, is that this is where I really want us all to remember. There's one vital difference. Hamas is targeting innocent civilians. Their goal is to rape women, kidnap Holocaust survivors, and murder children. And Israel, yes, ultimately is going to be responsible also for the loss of civilian life because that's what happens in war. But they are not targeting.

civilians. They are unfortunately getting caught in the battlefield. Okay, a couple things. One, I would say that Egypt doesn't open their border. Yes, because of some influences that might come across the border. But there's also talk that that would undermine the influence of the Palestinian Authority and there are all kinds of political reasons why they might not want to do that as well. Two, is that civilians are killed in Gaza all the time. They are. Civilians, like, non-combatants, like over 250 people have been killed, were killed in Gaza before this.

People are killed there all the time, all the time. So that in and of itself, as far as targeting is concerned, but if we're being realistic and real about what happens, is that civilians get killed in Gaza by the IDF. It happens. There are skirmishes around settlements that get established in the West Bank. I don't deny that civilians get killed on both sides. That is undeniably.

But Israel does not target civilians. Well, I don't know how somebody gets killed if they're not targeted. You got to point your gun and then you got to shoot it. But look, so. Ben, have you ever served in any war capacity ever? Have I served in war capacity ever? Civilians get killed without being targeted all the time. That's the future of war prior to the war.

But prior to what we're talking about right now, which is the war. I'm talking about an aspect of life. in Gaza is that civilians get killed in Gaza. But who was running Gaza prior to this war? Okay. So one thing, the last thing I was. This is a, this is a critical point.

No, Gaza and the West Bank, which there is military occupancy in the West Bank. First of all, Israel. First of all, can I just interrupt for one second? Have either of you ever been to Israel? No. No.

Okay. we're all on air. So this is like a hold me to it moment. When this is over, if you feel safe to come, it would be my honor on my dime to fly both of you out, you know, coach and in a shitty hotel, but on my dime to come. And we'll do whatever you want. You want to go to the border, whatever safe at that point. It would be my honor to bring you both to see everything happening in real time. Yes, to see suffering on both sides. And also just, to experience everything on the ground. I think we have mutual friends

and Rabbi Lamb and the people at Soul Shop. We can do it as a big group. We can do it the three of us. We can do it however you want. But it would be, as soon as it's saved, really my honor to take you guys and to have this conversation

in real time on the ground. Okay. I will say this, though. Like, I have worked deeply with organizations like the dream defenders and other organizations that go there all the time. And there's advocacy work.

I am legitimately on one side of this. I am on the side of freedom and peace in Israel and for the Palestinian people. Freedom and peace for the Palestinian peace, for the Palestinian people, and for Israel. I'm also aware of some of the realities that stop that from happening. Last thing I'll say, because I really do appreciate your time, and I think that you've been very gracious with your time talking about a very difficult situation and something that you've been, personally affected by both with what's happened and what happened onto it. So getting back to the conversation about Black Lives Matter and representation. All right.

I'm sure you know who Edward Bloom is. Students for Fair Admissions. I'm sure you know who Dennis Prager is from Prager Youth. All right. When Edward Bloom, Jewish man, very prominent Jewish man, who has worked his entire life to hurt black people. When he essentially got affirmative action, ended at the Supreme Court level,

I did not go to one of my Jewish friends and say, hey, guys, you guys should all, just went real quick, real quick. I did not go to one of my Jewish friends and say, hey, guys, you guys should all be denouncing this guy who is working to promote and enhance systemic racism in America. Dennis Prager, who through Prager You, is changing the educational standard in Florida by giving propaganda videos.

All of these guys have been looked at as individuals, individual actors with individual organizations. I'm not going to ever make that the problem of all of my Jewish friends or anything like that. The only thing that we would say is as black people, that black lives matter as an organization, no matter how big or how small they are, no matter how much money anybody. sent to them in 2020, that as an organization, that Black Lives Matter to be kept separate, right? That's the Black Lives Matter, Global Network Foundation. That's Black Lives Matter, Chicago, that that be kept separate from what black people

all over America are doing. And the reason why I bring that up is because for us, when we're talking about lives being in danger, and I know that my Jewish friends can identify with this, when we're we're talking about lives being in danger, when we're talking about lives being on the line, that's our reality all the time. So what we would appreciate, like this is for everyone, and I know that you understand this now, what we would appreciate is that, like, the history of who we are not kind of be thrown back up in our face, and everyone who's seemingly helping us so much to not, like, remind us and like, it's like everybody's taking notes and stuff like that.

Black people have a lot of problems, not didn't have a lot of problems, have a lot of problems now. And a lot of people that I know are trying to understand this, make sense of it, contextualize it. A lot of people are trying to get away from what looks like brown people against white people. There's a lot of education that needs to be done. And I understand that there's a lot of hurt. But what I would ask for is not to pick up Twitter and have Selma or anything. anything like that be used as something to activate a community that are literally still in the ghetto and still trying to figure it out. It's hurtful to us. And there's work to be done. I talk to

Dr. Lamb about this all the time. I'm willing to do the work with him. I reached out to him on Saturday. I forgot that he's not going to be looking at this shit on Saturday. And I reached out to almost every Jewish person I know. I've been on the phone for hours this weekend, this whole week. And I do think in a way that a lot of people in this space failed to just confront the humanity of our Jewish brothers and sisters. And I'll give you that. But I want to make sure that this doesn't deepen any divides that already exist, Daniel. And I'll let you have the last word.

Well, first of all, thank you both. I don't think I've had a conversation this honest and thoughtful and not three-second soundbites and got yet in a really long time on any news format. So I'm grateful for the platform and for including me. I'm taking to heart what you said, and it means a lot. I think I said this to my husband because I snapped at him about something last night, and I'm going to say it here. make a little space for your Jewish friends to fuck up also in the next few weeks. Because we are not sleeping. We're not eating. Those of us who are not in Israel wish we were. We're scrambling to deal with logistical problems. We're scrambling to deal with childcare for our friends whose husbands have been called up.

We're dealing with a lot. And it's been really hard. And I appreciate this allyship. and I really hope you guys, I don't know, whatever, I hope you guys take me up on the Israel thing after, and maybe we can all do a Shabbat dinner at the very least, but I'd love to continue this conversation about how we can do the work together offline when the camera's not rolling and there's not an act of war. Word up.

That is. Thank you, Daniela. Thank you, Daniela. I know that this was a hard conversation. I know that things are hard right now. That is Danielle Greenbaum Davis. We hope to continue and have more conversation with you. But take some space, pray for peace, pray for everyone's safety.

And thank you for joining us on higher learning. Thank you. You know, I didn't know how the conversation was going to go with Danielle, but I actually ended up appreciating it at the end of the day. There's just one little thing that I want to say because there kept being the mention. And it was a tweet from Daniela that Black Lives Matter is a terrorist organization. And she just unilaterally said that. And to be clear, and she also said this in our conversation with her, that she was only referring to BLM Chicago.

And Black Lives Matter Global Network actually put out a statement saying that they have not made any kind of statements in regards to support for Hamas or anything that was related to that graphic that BLM Chicago put up. So they completely denounce that. So I just want to say that they are not a terrorist organization in regards to Black Lives Matter global network. Can't speak for BL in Chicago, what they thought. No, no, we want to say that that rhetoric, we're standing apart from that. We didn't get a chance to address it in there, but Rachel is right on top of it as always. All right. A little quick breather, because I want to talk about this real quick.

A little quick breather. I hope that you guys really got something from those three interviews. We were very involved. Thank you to Yai. Thank you to Shibble. Thank you to Daniela for coming on to the show. We're going to keep up with this situation. We want to give you a robust show on it.

We promise we'd have some people and we did. Now, I want to get into this real quick. And it's Jada Pinkett Smith because I'm sorry. I can't even believe you brought this into the show. Well, look, there's other things that we can talk about that I think are wrong. I think docks in college students for their takes when their brains aren't fully formed yet. I think that's wrong. I also think that really powerful people,

that are attacking college students for their takes and saying that they're not going to get hired for jobs and keeping lists on people. All of that stuff is wrong, but don't give me wrong. But I also think something is wrong on a more minute level.

And that's this. Using your personal shit like that you've been keeping on the tough for this long to sell a book. I think Jada Pinkett Smith, I think Jada Pinkett Smith is just fucking kicking Will Smith and his nuts from the back. Every situation she can.

And I don't understand how in any way we could deny it. Am I wrong for saying that? Is anybody denying it? See, to me, the timing of this and that it is with the book. And also just like everything that's going on in the world, it's like that we got to talk about this too and that the announcement was all at this time. It's just like people really have no energy left to give this couple.

To me, this is right on par with the things that Jada has done. I am not shocked that she held this close to the chest until the release of the book. It's becoming to the point where, I'm be very honest with you, I don't believe her. I don't know if I believe every single thing that she's saying. I think that there seems to be some exaggeration on some parts. maybe you were separated in 2016. Maybe you got back together. Maybe the lines were blurred.

The Chris Rocks thing, I find very interesting. I think that that could be a, that's a misinterpretation. I just, there's just, please give the audio. Donnie, Donnie, let's let Jada have her say about her and Will real quick. In 2016, you and Will decided that you were going to live completely separate lives. It was not a divorce on paper, but it was a divorce. So from the year 2016, which is seven years ago now, you all have been apart. Yeah.

So that means that a lot of this stuff that we're talking about, they weren't together for it, right? We're talking August Alcena and entanglements and all of that type of stuff. Think about the fact that in any of this time that Will Smith was catching hell on the internet because a young niggar from New Orleans was, I guess, having sex with his wife, that would have been a fantastic time in any of that to be like, you know what? Not really because we weren't really together. She said that. they said,

correct me if I'm wrong, Donnie, Ashley. She said before on Red Tabletop that they were separated. I thought that they were, I thought there was more of a situation, not that they were, this makes it seem like,

here she said, this, we're divorced without it being on paper. I mean, divorce to me was that they were separated during the slap. And I thought that was the revelation. Not the August Alcena.

Please. you know, Donnie asked to jump in here. The gag was that, oh, he went up and slapped him and y'all were separated? Y'all weren't even together? See, but that, that to me, it's all in the same organic globule of bullshit because him feeling that he needed to, first of all, they were at the Oscars together. So that already, in and of itself, cuts against the idea of them being separated. They're going there as a unit, right?

When you say divorce, but. together, I think the emotional part of that is actually more important. So it's one thing if you have an open relationship, but hey, we're still a family. I just like to get a drug every now and again from somebody else. And Will, we also know, has been out there fucking other people. So that's not that big of a deal if you have an open relationship. But if you're divorced, a divorce is a break, not just of, there's a romantic thing there that doesn't exist as well. that I think people thought still existed

at a baseline between Will and Jetta. You sure they did. If that's the case, what's the point of dragging this nigga on a red table talk, red-faced, and having a conversation about all of this other stuff if there was no emotional connection to them anymore? They were dragging it because I think the emotional connection or the lack thereof is from Jada.

I mean, Jada has flat out said, I never wanted to be married. I didn't want a traditional relationship. So people feel, and so, like, it's embarrassing for Will. Any opportunity she gets to have a microphone, she's just going to dog Will Smith. That's what that. So I totally believe that there was a lack of connection,

and I believe it came from Jada's part. It always seems like Will was trying to, and I could be so wrong. Like, it just seemed like he was desperate for this relationship to work. And she was like, nah, you knew I never wanted this anyway. Man. I never gave any, I never gave any, I never gave any creed. to them, pussy open to the world pictures.

You ever seen the pictures before? Pussy Open to the world. No. Donnie, you know what I'm talking about? I don't. And I can't go away. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Y'all never seen the pictures of Will and Jada sitting in the,

hold on, actually, Quirk Queen. Have you ever seen these pictures? Like, Quirk Queen, y'all never heard this? Y'all never seen the pictures of Will and Jada and they're sitting in the front row. of some awards show, and Will is looking at a certain way, and Jada is sitting her legs are open, and it says like, they're doing like this weird,

toxic, manosphere, body language breakdown. I do know you're talking about now. Yeah. And it says, and it says Jada doing like this, blah, like pussy open to the world because her legs are open. I don't like that. I don't like that. And I don't even like Jada like that.

I don't like that. And I'm not a Jada defender. But come on. Have you seen the picture? Have you seen the picture? No, but just because she. Just because she can't stand Will Smith doesn't mean that her pussy's open to the world. Wait, it's not necessarily, first of all, don't curse, man.

Rachel, like, don't curse. It made me feel bad when you curse, man. I'm serious, I'm serious, man. Rachel, I have put, I have put in my mind this version of you, the walls of Jericho, all this stuff. When you curse, every time you curse, every time you curse, every time. I'm a nigger or a fuck. Every time you say that, I feel like, I feel responsible. Like, I'm, I feel like a judge is going to, he's going to blame me for you cursing because

I never hear you talk like that. Rachel don't even really be cursing that much when we're around each other like in a different way. Right. Not really, not that much. You curse sometimes. No, I got to really be, if I'm really drinking, I am. Yeah.

If I'm around my Texas people, I am. Yeah. So you haven't seen, but what I'm saying is the picture. is basically just saying that she doesn't seem like she's like connected to Will there. It's like pussy open to the world. It seems like she's wide open. That's how I'm interpreting it. That's how it's coming across.

Listen, you enjoyed this. You like you, you, you, you like the Jada and Will mess. No, I don't know. I think they're both really awesome people. Like seriously, I think they're awesome people. Yeah. I just think we need to be free. Free us from this.

That's how I feel so. Like free. Seriously, but if there's two relationships that we need to be freed from. Like Jada and Will, Jada and Will ain't nothing but Blueface and Creshawn with some money. It's really it. I'm serious. Like, free us from this, man. And town.

Free us. Free us, man. And who's the other couple? It's Blueface and Creshawn. And then it's Jada and Will. Jada and Will or Blueface and Creshawn with money. free us from this. Free us.

Okay? I don't want to hear no more, man. I'm going to read the book. And apparently, apparently according to Jada, I'm going to read that book. Apparently according to Jada, Chris Rock tried to holler, you talked about that. What do you think about that?

Chris Rock tried to do that. I don't. I think everything she says is an exaggeration or some form of the truth. I believe he probably picked up the phone and called her and might have said something like, you know, like, what's up? And she's whatever. But I don't think that he asked her out. I just, I don't know.

It's just of all the people, really, it was Chris Rock. Really? I just. Why don't you believe that? You don't think Chris Rock been trying to, you've been like fucking around with Jada for a long time. Was it widespread out there that they were separated in 2016? Because that's what she said.

She's like, oh, he found out we were separate. like it was just out there I don't know I asked her by it on TNT I'm not like I'm just not giving it anything you asked about what I saw Jada outside um what's the what's the eyebrow lady place the lady to do the eyebrows

Anastasia Anastasia Fancy Fancy as niggas brough You ask me what it is I didn't say I go there You know about it I have an appointment tomorrow See I'm not even lying See

That's what it was on Bedford Job in Beverly Hills And this is This is why see you know You know You're a fancy ass, Metsch So we are

So she's outside I see her outside of Anastasia I'm like oh that's Jada Pinky It's a good shot This is why I was the man I was praised At the office after I asked this question So the

The rumor was that they were already broken up And you know A lot of people would go up To Jada and they would say, Jada, Jada, is it true that you and Will had broken up? It's not how you do it.

That's not the way to do it. Show us how you used to do it. You walk up to Jada and you have the camera and you're like, Jada, Valentine's Day is coming up. He's like, yeah. Are you going to be spending it with somebody? She's like, yeah, I will. Boom.

That's how we ask questions on the carpet. Boom. You would have been graded extra. That's how you get it. That's how you get the fucking story, baby. That's how you interrupt a celebrity's life when they're living their day. So they spent valenttimes together in what year?

I don't can't remember what that was. That might have been like. They might, but look, they might have been. But it was around that time. I wouldn't put it past them to spend Valentine's Day together on dates with other people. I mean, it was, it's always been rumored that they had an open relationship. But the way that she's talking about it in this book, it's just exhausted. As you said, free us.

now free me from this podcast. That's it. No mail bag, no nothing else. Rachel really wants to talk about the A.K.A. s because it's an A.k.a. topic on this. Because Rachel always. I told Sonny. I told that to Sunny today sitting at the table during the commercial break.

Sonny and AKA? She's an A.k.a. Is it crazy to you that the A.K.A.s wherever you go are like over you? No, stop that. Stop that. They're not. We have a Supreme Court Justice of the Delta. Please stop. Stop. Yeah.

But she's actually. not the vice president. Word on the street is she's not doing anything. Vice president didn't do anything. See? See what happens? We got to go. We got to go.

See what she just did? Is that, is that gang shit over everything? Yeah, whatever. You just guessed it. It's like, is that gang shit over everything, man. It was just too easy. All right. Take de caps off.

We do not stop learning. Thank you for all of our guests today. We really appreciate you guys coming on and having difficult conversations. Thank you a lot. Absolutely. And I'm Rachel and Lindsay. Hi, guys. All right.